GUWAHATI: The Guwahati Tea Auction Buyers’ Association (GTABA) has welcomed the Assam government’s decision to allow Guwahati Tea Auction Centre (GTAC) to resume operations during the extended lockdown period.
The Kamrup Metropolitan district administration has accorded permission to GTAC to restart operations in a limited manner and conduct e-auction from Thursday.
“We welcome the Assam government’s decision to allow GTAC and its constituents to resume their offices and operate in auctions. It will help all the seller members who want to sell their teas immediately at GTAC because due to the lockdown they were unable to open their factories,” GTABA secretary Dinesh Bihani, informed The Shillong Times here on Thursday.
The district administration’s permission also allows functioning of related stakeholders such as registered tea warehouses, tea auctioneers’ offices, tea buyers’ offices, tea producers’ offices of Guwahati city and related transporter companies and courier offices.
Tea estates of Assam, which have been shut since March 22, 2020, have resumed plucking operations on Saturday by following social distancing norms and taking other precautionary measures in the wake of the novel coronavirus outbreak.
“The tea estates of the state have resumed operations and they have produced their teas and dispatched to GTAC. This will be very helpful to reduce their cash crunch and solve their problem of cash liquidity to some extent,” Bihani said.
“Regarding prices, we think the market will open with strong demand and teas might be sold at dearer rates because in the last two months there have been hardly any teas sold in the auctions. At present, the pipeline is empty and until full-fledged production, the prices may be on the higher side,” he said.
The buyers association expected producers to make good quality tea so that the demand is higher and price realisation better.